Peretz Cognition 2006

Cognition 100 (2006) 1–32
www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT
The nature of music from a biological perspective

Isabelle Peretz *
International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research (BRAMS), University of Montreal,
Montreal, Que., Canada
Available online 17 January 2006
Abstract
Music, as language, is a universal human trait. Throughout human history and across all
cultures, people have produced and enjoyed music. Despite its ubiquity, the musical capacity is
rarely studied as a biological function. Music is typically viewed as a cultural invention. In this
paper, the evidence bearing on the biological perspective of the musical capacity is reviewed.
Related issues, such as domain-specificity, innateness, and brain localization, are addressed in
an attempt to offer a unified conceptual basis for the study of music processing. This scheme
should facilitate the study of the biological foundations of music by bringing together the
fields of genetics, developmental and comparative research, neurosciences, and musicology.
Ó 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Musical capacity; Innateness; Specificity; Brain; Modules; Universals; Predispositions;

Emotions
1. Introduction
Music is generally regarded as an exquisite art form, a refined product of human

culture. Such a perspective has led many cognitive scientists to characterize music as
the product of a general-purpose cognitive architecture (Bregman, 1990; Handel,
1989; Krumhansl, 1990) or as assembled from other faculties that were not originally
designed for its purposes (Pinker, 1997). In a sense, contemporary composers and
*
Fax: +1 514 343 5787.
E-mail address: Isabelle.Peretz@umontreal.ca.
0010-0277/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.004
2 I. Peretz / Cognition 100 (2006) 1–32
ethnomusicologists reinforce this cultural perspective on music. Modern Composers

argue that musical preferences are culture-specific and can be modified by exposure
alone (Schönberg, 1984). Musicologists typically study music as a social construct
that varies from culture to culture, rejecting cross-cultural quests for universals
underlying the diversity (Blacking, 1990). Yet, common principles may underlie
the world’s diverse musical cultures. These principles may also be guided by innate
mechanisms. In other words, music might be in our nature. The consideration of
music as a biological function rather than a cultural invention is relatively recent
(Wallin, Merker, & Brown, 2000) and hence, is far from established. The objective
of this special issue is to consider the different perspectives and sources of evidence
regarding the biological1 foundations of music.
Humans are, by definition, biological organisms. As a consequence, anything that
the human brain creates might be considered biological. However, the human brain is
also a highly flexible system that can learn and invent codes and skills that can be
transmitted to others by nongenetic mechanisms. The Morse code is such an inven-
tion. The question here is whether music is such a cultural product or is in ‘‘our genes’’.
Obviously, music is not a recent product. Unlike the Morse code, music was not
invented at one time and one location and then spread to others. Throughout human
history and across all cultures, individuals have produced and enjoyed music (Mer-
riam, 1964). Music has emerged spontaneously and in parallel in all known human
societies. Although we do not know when music emerged because there are no fossil
records of singing, archeological evidence shows a continuous record of musical
instruments, dating back to at least 30,000 years (D’Errico et al., 2003). Thus, music
is an ancient capacity rather than the recent creation of a single intelligence. Music
appears to transcend time, place, and culture.
Paradoxically, the musical capacity appears to be fully developed in only a minor-
ity of humans who can make music. Becoming a proficient musician requires thou-
sands of hours of practice and, in most case, explicit transmission. This is often taken
as an argument against the notion that the musical capacity is innately determined. If
genes were responsible for the human musical capacity, then everyone should be able
to engage in musical activities. In fact, everyone does. Nearly everyone can carry a
tune (Dalla Bella, Giguère, & Peretz, submitted) and move to music. The problem
arises from the association of music-making with an elite of professional musicians.
What is usually forgotten is that music is meant for the ears of the majority. Every-
one from all walks of life and all cultures is musical to some extent. Unless they are
tone-deaf, all humans exhibit a precocious inclination for music. In short, music
appears as natural as language is.
Music is more mysterious than language because its raison d’être remains unset-
tled. Music has no obvious utility. Music is also difficult to define. Everyone knows
what music is but cannot delimit its boundaries. The concept of music is variable,
and some cultures have no separate term for music, including dance and music in
1
The biological-cultural distinction refers to the nature-nurture, innate-acquired distinctions. I selected
the term ‘‘cultural’’ because for most people, music is part of culture like other forms of arts, and has little
to do with biology.
I. Peretz / Cognition 100 (2006) 1–32 3
the same category. Regardless of definitional problems, the musical capacity can be
studied rigorously.
Contributions from leading scientists from the life sciences, including psychology,
animal biology, cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, and musicology, are gathered in
the present issue. Their positions lie between two extremes. At one extreme, the
capacity for acquiring musical abilities is seen as an evolutionary adaptation, shaped
by natural selection and governed by genes. At the other extreme, musical abilities
are viewed as the result of general-purpose learning capacities that are shaped by
the environment – the ‘‘blank slate’’ or the tabula rasa scenario (Pinker, 2002).
Consideration of music as arising from natural endowment or from culture is not
a question for academic circles alone. These opposing views of the emergence of
musicality have radically different evolutionary explanations of music. They also
have a profound impact on how scientists study musical abilities, how clinicians
use music and assess musical abilities, and how education policy incorporates music
in the curriculum.
Let me illustrate the importance of theory with the condition of tone-deafness.
Tone-deafness is a life-long inability to appreciate and engage in musical activities.
For almost a century, there have been voices that have denied its existence (Kazez,
1985). Some music educators, for example, consider tone-deafness as resulting from
either lack of motivation or from improper training. They believe that all individuals
can learn music if given the opportunity. Yet, it is estimated that 4% of the general
population might suffer from tone-deafness (Kalmus & Fry, 1980). Adherents of a
biological perspective would predict such a prevalence of tone-deafness, simply on
the basis of natural variation, like other developmental disorders such as specific-lan-
guage-impairment and developmental prosopagnosia. This could be the cost of
developing a highly modularized brain for most functions including music (see
below). Ignoring the existence of tone-deafness may not only ostracize those affected
but may also occlude a rich source of information about the roots of musicality as
well as its neural and genetic underpinnings.
Likewise, fundamental questions regarding musical abilities have been largely
neglected until recently because these were considered of limited utility. For example,
there is little research on critical periods (Trainor, 2005), on universals, on animal
roots (Hauser & McDermott, 2003), on genes in relation to music. Nevertheless,
there have been remarkable advances in uncovering the musical abilities of infants
(e.g., Trehub & Hannon, this volume) and of nonmusicians in general (e.g., Bigand
& Poulin-Charronat, this volume), and in exploring the musical brain (e.g., Peretz &
Zatorre, 2005) and musical emotions (e.g., Juslin & Sloboda, 2001). These sources of
evidence make it possible to pose questions about the nature of music.
2. How musical are humans?
Nearly half of the English and American population has learned to play an instru-
ment in childhood, according to a recent British survey (North, Hargreaves, &
O’Neill, 2000) and the American Gallup survey. Sixty-four percent of those ques-
tioned began musical training between the ages of 5 and 11, when the brain exhibits
its greatest plasticity. These children spent more time in music training and practice
than in second language learning, gymnastics, arts, and other educational activities.
Therefore, many have been trained musically and nearly everyone remains musically
inclined and avid consumer of music in one form or another.
Thus, the ordinary adult listener is a musical expert, although s/he may be una-
ware of this. To reveal this expertise requires the exploitation of indirect methods,
as Bigand and Poulin-Charronat (this volume) illustrate. Such indirect tests reveal
that nonmusicians and proficient musicians appreciate music in a very similar man-
ner. To take an example from our own recent work (Dalla Bella & Peretz, 2005),
musicians and nonmusicians alike distinguish the styles of classical music (e.g., Bar-
oque, Romantic). All listeners, regardless of training, rated pairs of unfamiliar musi-
cal selections as more similar when their compositional styles were closer in history.
Response did not require labeling, enabling us to show that discrimination of musi-
cal styles were within the reach of the average listener. Similar findings are obtained
in other musical situations that are often regarded as only accessible to the musical
elite. Such situations are diverse, involving the generation of expectancies based on
syntax-like relationships among tones, chords, and keys (Shepard & Jordan, 1984;
Tillmann, Bharucha, & Bigand, 2000), the perception of relations between theme
and variations (Bigand, 1990), perception of coherence between parts of a Haydn
piano sonata, and the categorization of subtle emotional expressions in music
(Bigand, Vieillard, Madurell, & Marouzeau, in press).
Interestingly, and surprisingly, musicians do not necessarily have advantages over
nonmusicians in production tasks. We recently observed that professional singers
(and professional musicians, in general) learned a song no more readily than non-
musicians (Racette & Peretz, in press). As can be seen in Fig. 1, musicians do not
recall more words or more pitches than nonmusicians in singing, despite the fact
that musicians have frequently musical lessons before the age of seven and have
musical structured exposure for over 15 years. Learning a popular song appears
to be a basic task that everyone can master. Mere exposure with an inclination
for music is sufficient.
Just as music making is not necessary to acquire basic musical performance, for-
mal training is not required for music proficiency. A well-known case is Louis
Amstrong (Collier & Person, 1983). Amstrong was poor and had to make a living
very early on. Because he grew up in an area where music was used to attract pros-
titutes’ clientele, he began singing at an early age, playing regularly with three other
boys in a quatuor. By 17, Amstrong owned his own cornet, and at 19, he became a
musician on a touring boat. When he left the boat, at 23, he was a professional musi-
cian. Amstrong represents a prototypical example of jazz musicians who played
music without explicit tutoring. Genes or talent may contribute to exceptional
careers. A love for music and a musically rich environment may play an equally
important, perhaps even more important, role.
In summary, humans are musical. Musical abilities are widely distributed in the
population, probably on a continuum of musicianship with poor abilities at one
extreme and superior abilities at the other. The vast majority lies in the middle with
A 36
Professional singers
32
Singing as minor
Number of participants
28 No singing training
Nonmusicians
24
20
16
12
8
4
0
4 lines 6 lines 8 lines
Attempted lines
B 100
Nonmusicians
Mean percentage of correct Recall
90
n.s. Musicians
80
n.s.
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Words Notes (pitch)
Sung components
Fig. 1. (A) Proportions of nonmusicians (in white) and professional musicians (black and grey) reaching
each level of song line recall; (B) mean percentage of words and notes correctly sung by nonmusicians and
musicians. Note that musicians, including professional singers, did not reproduce more lines nor more
correct pitches than nonmusicians (n.s.; Racette and Peretz, in press).
a common core of musical knowledge but modest production skills. For music to be
appreciated, performers and listeners alike must share core processes and knowledge.
Onto this core system, more elaborate knowledge and skills can be added as a result
of music-making, with or without explicit tutoring. The point is that none of these
would be necessary for the functionality of the core system.
Paradoxically, this is a recent discovery. Early empirical research in music focused
on the musically trained individuals (Krumhansl & Kessler, 1982), and in theoretical
proposals (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983) on art music. Contemporary research is
mostly conducted with musicians and nonmusicians. Such research uses musical
material that is accessible to the majority of individuals. The focus on ‘‘functional
music’’ is more valid psychologically and it also has cross-cultural implications.
3. What music?
By ‘‘functional’’ music, I endorse Nettl’s (1973) view of the kind of music that is
appealing to most members of a given culture. One example is music of tribal and
folk societies that engage the community as a whole. Hence, functional music can
be understood by all members of the community who can participate in it as well.
Such popular music, based on rock, jazz, blues, country and western, and folk music,
typically has little prestige. Academic musicians often concentrate on the uniqueness
of a piece of music and on its complexity of structure and texture. They may have
little concern for its accessibility or approval. ‘‘Functional’’ or popular music incor-
porates very different values (see also Lerdahl, 1988; for making a similar distinction
between artificial and natural compositional grammars). Uniqueness may not be
important in natural or functional music. Public accessibility is the key to the surviv-
al of such music.
By studying music intended for the majority, we are closer to meeting the condi-
tions under which people across cultures and history have interacted with music.
Often the music is live, public, improvisational, spontaneous, participatory, and
social (Sloboda & O’Neill, 2001). This contrasts with the prior focus on art music
or contemporary music, such as serial atonal composition or quarter-tone music.
Studying the music for the elite puts us at risk of focusing on a music that is ephem-
eral. One can make a stronger case by studying everyday music, involving lullabies
(Trehub & Trainor, 1998) and adolescent music (North et al., 2000). This change in
perspective is illustrated by Jackendoff and Lerdahl’s (this volume) reference to the
Beatles’ songs, rather than the art or classical music that served as examples in their
original publication (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983).
By studying popular or functional music, we also come closer to the domain of
enthnomusicologists. Ethnomusicology has contributed more than psychology to
the liberation of research from ‘‘art’’ music, by studying any type of music in any
context as worthy of interest. In principle, this discipline could provide us with a list
of musical traits that are common to all known musical cultures and traits that are
culture-specific. In practice, however, musicology has contributed little to the quest
for universals.
3.1. Universals
Obviously, the quest for universals is seen as fruitless for those who do not con-
sider music as biologically determined. This is the case of most ethnomusicologits
who emphasize cultural diversity, in highlighting differences in historical and cultural
traditions to account for the observed musical properties (Nettl, 2000). Nettl (2000),
one of the leading ethnomusicologist of our time, proposes a few very basic univer-
sals: (i) vocal music; (ii) the meter or a sense of pulse, and (iii) the use of three or four
pitches (usually combining major seconds and minor thirds). The only serious excep-
tion can be found in Lomax’s Cantometric work (Lomax, 1977, 1980). Lomax has
compared the musical performance of 4000 songs from 148 geographically and cul-
turally different world regions, on a diverse set of structural and performance
properties. Lomax reduced the 148 cultures to 10 families that could be further
reduced to two roots for their highly contrastive structure. One is thought to have
emerged in Artic hunters and fishers and the other, among African gatherers. The
first is characterized by male-dominated solos or rough unison singing, and by free
or irregular rhythms. The second, in contrast, is feminized, polyvoiced, regular in
rhythm, repetitious, melodically brief, cohesive, and well integrated. Clearly, the pro-
posed universals are more tightly connected to social functions, rooted in sex role
and team organization, than to melody, scale or meter. At the very least, Lomax’
cantometrics could serve as a departure point for further study but no one has fol-
lowed his lead. The scarcity of musicological research on musical universals may well
arise from the resistance to consider biological determinism in music (Arom, 2000).
Psychologists were the first to point out that tonal scale systems are almost uni-
versal in the music of the world’s cultures. Dowling and Harwood (1986, pp. 90–91)
found only a handful of cultures in which the pitches used in singing did not provide
evidence of scale steps. The overwhelming majority of cultures use stable musical
scales that share several general properties: (1) discrete pitch levels, (2) octave equiv-
alence, (3) a moderate number (usually 5–7) pitches within the octave, which are
repeated through different octaves, (4) a tonal hierarchy in which certain pitches
function as stable points of melodic resolution and others as contrasting unstable
points (Dowling & Harwood, 1986; Dowling, 1999, 2001). Carterette and Kendall
(1999) propose that the wide spectrum of musical cultures arises from the choices
and elaborations of six universals. Two of these overlap with Dowling and
Harwood’s proposal, namely the division of the octave in scale steps and the use
of a stable reference pitch. They add: (1) the notion of a deep-structural idea; (2) ele-
mentary auditory grouping; (3) reference pulses; (4) the induction of rhythmic pat-
terns by the asymmetrical subdivision of time pulses. Similarly, but based on the
remarkable similarity between infants and adults in music processing, Trehub
(2000) proposes relational pitch and time features (e.g., contour); small integer fre-
quency ratios (2:1, 3:2, 4:3); unequal scale steps; and the existence of a special genre
of music for infants (e.g., lullabies) as musical universals.
Among these musical universals, the use of fixed and discrete pitches seems to be
fundamental and unique to music. These pitch sets remain intact from generation
to generation, even in the absence of mechanical instruments or notation. The vocal
play of 6–12 month olds that leads to singing is clearly distinguishable from the vocal
play associated with incipient speech, both in its use of stable pitch levels on vowels
and in its rhythmic organization in terms of a regular beat pattern (Dowling, 1984,
1999, p. 611; Dowling & Harwood, 1986, pp. 147ff.). Even a simple reduction of
degrees of freedom in the pitch domain does not entail limited richness of music.
The eight notes of a diatonic scale can be ordered in 40,320 different ways, considering
note successions without repetition. If notes are a repeat, the set expands astronomi-
cally, even without the use of concurrent notes in the form of chords or simultaneous
notes. This finite pitch set enables the generation of an infinite number of musical
structures. Thus, factors related to the discriminability and learnability of fixed and
discrete pitches must constrain these choices. These factors may well be innate (Dow-
ling, 2005, personal communication), so shaping all the musics of the world.
4. How unique is music processing?
The observation that music but not speech uses fixed and discrete pitch sets raises
the possibility that music processing is special in recruiting unique mechanisms.
Indeed, one would expect a cognitive ability that is biologically determined, to be
highly specialized in its operation. Unfortunately, the question of uniqueness has
fueled unresolved debates in the domain of language (Liberman & Whalen, 2000)
and of face processing (Gauthier & Curby, 2005). The seeds of this debate are also
present in the music domain (e.g., Howe, Davidson, & Sloboda, 1998 and see below).
Therefore, it is important to address the issue by distinguishing and clarifying some
concepts that are often confused when questions of specialization, domain-specific-
ity, brain localization, and innateness are considered. These concepts were connected
explicitly in Fodor’s (1983) proposal on the modularity of mind, and they have been
confounded in many subsequent discussions.
Domain-specificity and localization can be separated from innateness. Neural sys-
tems that are domain-specific and localized do not have to be innate because expe-
rience-dependent learning may give rise to such systems. A well-known example is
reading which depends critically on phonological awareness and on the visual word
form system, a left inferior temporal region specifically devoted to the processing of
letter strings (Cohen et al., 2000). Yet, reading cannot be considered innate. Literacy
is a recent human invention that requires explicit tutoring. Conversely, innateness
can be posited for a function or a task without invoking specialized or localized
mechanisms. This position2 is taken by Trehub and Hannon (this volume). They pro-
pose that music perception is the product of general mechanisms (i.e., not domain-
specific) operating in conjunction with innate motivational disposition towards
music and the perpetuation of musical behavior. Hence, the evidence for domain-
specificity, innateness and brain localization must be examined separately.
In contrast, Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983; Jackendoff, 1987), Dowling (2001,
2005, personal communication) and I (Peretz, 2001a, 2001b; Peretz & Coltheart,
2003) have proposed that music processing components, especially those involved
on pitch-based computations, rely on domain-specific mechanisms and specialized
neural networks. A prime example of such a music-specific module is the system con-
cerned with tonal encoding of pitch (see also Jackendoff and Lerdahl, this volume).
2
Similarly, Mari Riess Jones and her colleagues (Drake, Jones, & Baruch, 2000; Jones, 1990, 2004;
Large & Jones, 1999; McAuley, Jones, Holub, Johnson, & Miller, in press) regard music processing as the
result of the fine-tuning of general-purpose brain oscillations. According to this theory, infants rely mainly
on relatively fast periodicities that permit initial tuning into the rapid auditory events in our environment
(e.g., phonemes, brief tone patterns), and maturation generates a gradual shift to slower oscillations. Thus,
learning depends on these maturational constraints and the innate tendency to rely on certain (simple) time
ratios among internal attending oscillations. According to Jones’ rhythmic dynamic model, music is not
special because timing and rhythmic information are used in many different domains. Although the
oscillations may vary across domains, with some varying in their potential for synchronizing with the
external world and for synchronizing with other brain oscillations, speech and music processing both fall
out of these dynamics. Music and speech reflect different ways of exploiting and refining basic innate
tendencies regarding rhythmic dynamics.
Pitch variations generate a determinate scale in music but not in speech intonation
contours (Balzano, 1982). Moreover, scales are universal and have unequal-spaced
pitches that are organized around 5–7 focal pitches. Scale tones are not equivalent
and are organized around a central tone, called the tonic. Usually, a musical piece
starts and ends on the tonic. Among the other scale tones, there is a hierarchy of
importance or stability. The nonscale tones are the least related and often sound
anomalous. This implicit tonal knowledge allows any individual to detect a wrong
note, for example, in the musical surface. It is automatic and impenetrable to top-
down influences (Justus & Bharucha, 2001; Shepard & Jordan, 1984). This tonal
hierarchical organization of pitch is central because it facilitates perception, memory
and performance by creating expectancies about future auditory events (Tillmann
et al., 2000). This ability may be lost or compromised as a consequence of brain dam-
age (Peretz, 1993) or a congenital neural anomaly (Peretz & Hyde, 2003). In the lat-
ter case, it seems to result from a deficient connectivity with the inferior frontal gyrus
(Hyde, Zatorre, Griffiths, Lerch, & Peretz, under review), a brain region that is crit-
ically involved in working memory for musical pitch (Zatorre, Evans, & Meyer,
1994) and the perception of harmonic violations (Koelsch et al., 2002; Tillmann,
Janata, & Bharucha, 2003).
Thus, encoding pitch in musical contexts appears to be a domain-specific ability
that can be localized in the adult brain. Furthermore the ability appears to have
genetic contribution. In a recent twin study, 136 identical (monozygotic) twins and
148 fraternal (dizygotic) twins were required to detect out-of-key notes in popular
melodies. Performance was more similar between identical (r = 0.79) than between
fraternal twins (r = 0.46). Genetic model-fitting indicates that the influence of shared
genes is more important that shared environments, with a hereditability of 70–80%
(Drayna, Manichaikul, de Lange, Snieder, & Spector, 2001). Thus, the evidence is
quite compelling for considering musical pitch processing as a module in Fodor’s
sense (as initially proposed in Peretz & Morais, 1989) because this processing com-
ponent meets the requirements for domain-specificity, brain localization, and innate-
ness. Such a strong case for the biological thesis of music cannot be made forcefully
for other processing components. Hence, there is a need to examine carefully each
property separately, starting with domain-specificity.
4.1. Domain-specificity
Musical pitch processing represents only one component of the myriad of possible
mechanisms that contribute to musical behavior. From this perspective, it may seem
odd to refer to one of these components and to designate it as domain-specific.
Domain-specificity is typically reserved for a faculty. As argued elsewhere (Colt-
heart, 1999), however, there is no theoretical reason for excluding the concept of
domain-specificity at the level of components. A domain may be as broad and gen-
eral as auditory scene analysis and as narrow and specific as tonal encoding of pitch.
Both subsystems perform highly specific computations and hence are domain-specif-
ic. That is, both components deal with a particular aspect of music, and they do this
either exclusively or more effectively than any other mechanisms. Yet, auditory scene
analysis is supposed to intervene for all incoming sounds (Bregman, 1990), whereas
tonal encoding of pitch is exclusive to music.
Another important aspect of domain-specificity is that it can emerge from learn-
ing. The learning may be guided by innate mechanisms. It may also use general prin-
ciples, by extracting, for example, statistical regularities in the environment. This
possibility has been considered for the acquisition of tonal knowledge (resulting
from tonal encoding of pitch; Krumhansl, 1990; Tillmann et al., 2000). Although ton-
al encoding of pitch is music-specific, it may be built on ‘‘listeners’ sensitivity to pitch
distribution, [which is] an instance of general perceptual strategies to exploit regular-
ities in the physical world’’ (Oram & Cuddy, 1995, p.114). Thus, the input and out-
put of the statistical computation may be domain-specific while the learning
mechanism is not (Saffran, 2001). Once acquired, the functioning of the system,
say the tonal encoding of pitch, may be modular, by encoding musical pitch in terms
of keys exclusively and automatically.
The same reasoning applies to auditory scene analysis and to auditory grouping
(corresponding to a musical universal according to Carterette & Kendall, 1999).
The fact that these two processing components organize incoming sounds according
to general Gestalt principles, such as pitch proximity, does not entail that their func-
tioning is general-purpose and mediated by a single processing system. They need
not be. For instance, it would be very surprising if visual and auditory scene analyses
were mediated by the same system. Yet, both types of analyses obey to Gestalt prin-
ciples. It is likely that the visual and auditory input codes adjust these mechanisms to
their processing needs. Thus, the input codes may transform general-purpose mech-
anisms into highly specialized ones. The existence of multiple and highly specialized
micro-systems, even if they function in a very similar way, is more likely, because
modularization is more efficient (Marr, 1982). Fortunately, the issue is testable, espe-
cially with neuropsychological methods.
Thus, domain-specificity does not necessarily imply music-specificity. Rather
music-specificity should be examined for each subsystem or processing component.
In addition, domain-specificity does not necessarily require special-purpose learning
mechanisms. Domain-specificity may either emerge from general learning processes
or result from the nature of the input code.
The question now is to what extent music processing relies on dedicated mecha-
nisms. We already have one plausible candidate: tonal encoding of pitch. Is this the
only music-specific component? I will start with the evidence regarding the capacity
for music as a whole. If we can find support for music-specificity at the level of whole
functions, this will guide our search for its sources. Alternatively, if there is no hint of
such specialization for music, then it would question the relevance of searching for
distinctive roots of musicality in general, and of tonal encoding of pitch in music pro-
cessing in particular.
4.1.1. Musical modules

What counts as music or as nonmusical is not always clear. For example, rap
music may be heard as speech, and highly dissonant music as noise. Conversely,
some speech streams, such as the typical auction speech, may not be considered as
musical and yet this form of chanting might be processed as music. Such ambiguous
signals are not problematic for the auditory system, which does not need some kind
of gatekeeper to decide which part of the auditory pattern is sent to music processors
and which part to the language system. All information in the auditory input, includ-
ing the text and the melody of an auction chant, would be sent to all music and lan-
guage processors. The intervention of music- or language-specific components is
determined by the aspect of the input for which the processing component is
specialized.
For example, the bids in the auction chant reach the processors concerned with
encoding of speech and music. The pitch and time dynamics guide listeners’ attention
to the critical words that carry the bids, and the language modules are actively
engaged to derive the meaning (i.e., the price). In contrast, music-specific processors,
like the module for tonality, may not be very active because the chanted pitches are
not fixed and hence, fail to activate a determinate key.
More critical is the possibility that music has no domain-specific component other
than the module for tonality. As Pinker (1997) suggests, the music processing system
might be assembled from processors that are not specialized for music, but for some-
thing else. In other words, music may act as a parasite. For example, the cognitive
system may track musical pitch contour by engaging the mechanisms for speech into-
nation. Music may aim at the language system just as artistic masks target the face
recognition system. We can stretch this argument further and envisage that music
owes its efficacy in relying on the natural disposition for speech. Music may exagger-
ate particular speech features such as intonation and affective tone, that are so effec-
tive for bonding. In this perspective, the actual domain of the language modules is
invaded (Sperber & Hirschfeld, 2004). Music could have stabilized in all cultures
because music is so effective at co-opting one or several evolved modules. Multiple
anchoring in several modules may even contribute to the ubiquity and power of
music.
Presently, there is little support for this parasitic view because it is difficult to iden-
tify directionality. Language or music may have come first. It also requires identifi-
cation of all music processing components as shared with other functions.
Nevertheless, cases of isolated sparing or impairment of musical abilities suggest that
some processing components must be both essential and music-specific. Otherwise,
co-occurrence of disorders (co-morbidity) should be the rule. In many cases of aut-
ism, musical abilities develop spontaneously despite deficits in cognitive and affective
systems. Autistic individuals are generally more apt in music than in other cognitive
domains (Heaton, Hermelin, & Pring, 1998). Conversely, there are cases of musically
inept individuals who have normal language and intelligence. As noted, these indi-
viduals exist and are commonly called tone-deaf (Grant-Allen, 1878).
The selectivity of the musical disability is remarkable. These tone-deaf individuals
can have above average language skills, and may speak several languages without
accent (Geschwind, 1984). However, they are unable to sing, dance or recognize
music, despite formal training. This condition is termed congenital amusia (Peretz,
2001c). Their condition is the reverse of the musical-savant syndrome (Miller,
1989), illustrating exceptional isolation of musical modules in the developing brain.
Thus, co-morbidity between musical disorders and other deficiencies seems to be

negligible, which argues against the view that all of music processing components
are the result of general abilities or language abilities.
The best-known evidence for the autonomy of music processing comes from the
study of the effects of brain accidents in adults. Brain lesions can selectively interfere
with musical abilities while the rest of the cognitive system remains essentially intact
(e.g., Steinke, Cuddy, & Holden, 1997). Conversely, brain damage can impair musi-
cal abilities exclusively. Patients may no longer recognize melodies (presented with-
out words) that were highly familiar to them prior the onset of their brain damage.
In contrast, they are normal at recognizing spoken lyrics (and words, in general),
familiar voices and other environmental sounds (such as animal cries, traffic noises,
and human vocal sounds). The deficit can be remarkably selective. For example,
C.N. was unable to recognize hummed melodies from familiar songs. Yet, she could
recognize the lyrics accompanying these melodies (Peretz, 1996). Moreover, C.N.
could recognize the intonation patterns of speech (Patel, Peretz, Tramo, & Labrec-
que, 1998). The existence of a specific problem with music alongside normal func-
tioning of other auditory abilities, including speech comprehension, is consistent
with damage to processing components that are both essential to the normal process
of music recognition and specific to the musical domain. This condition is termed
acquired amusia (see Table 1, left panel).
A typical objection to this argument is that most people are amateurs at music but
experts at speech. Hence, music may suffer more than speech in the case of brain insult.
Thus, there would be no modules but a general auditory recognition system. When
damaged, amateur abilities (e.g., music) would be more impaired than expert abilities
(e.g., speech). This account predicts that it should not be possible to find brain-dam-
aged patients who are able to recognize music whilst being unable to recognize spoken
words. However, such cases exist. Nonmusicians may lose their ability to recognize
spoken words while remaining able to recognize music (see Table 1, left panel).
Similar findings are obtained in production studies. Brain-damaged patients may
lose the ability to sing familiar songs but retain the ability to recite the lyrics and
speak with normal prosody (Peretz et al., 1994). The selectivity of the vocal deficit
is not limited to amateurs. Schön, Lorber, Spacal, and Semenza (2004) recently
reported the case of an opera singer who was no longer able to sing pitch intervals
but who spoke with the correct intonation and expression. The reverse condition
(i.e., impaired speech with intact vocal production) is more common or reported
more often. Aphasic patients may remain able to sing familiar tunes and learn novel
tunes; in contrast, they fail to produce intelligible lyrics in both singing and speaking
(Hébert, Racette, Gagnon, & Peretz, 2003; Peretz, Gagnon, Macoir, & Hébert,
2004). The results (see Table 1, right panel) indicate that verbal production, whether
sung or spoken, is mediated by the same (impaired) language output system, and
that this speech route is distinct from both the (spared) musical and prosodic route.
In sum, the autonomy of music and language processing extends to production tasks.
Such neuropsychological cases are the best evidence in favor of musical modules.
The double dissociation implies the existence of anatomically and functionally seg-
regated systems for music and speech in which one system can function relatively
Table 1
Case reports of selective impairment and selective sparing in the auditory recognition of words, tunes, and other meaningful sounds (left panel) and in the
production of notes, words, and intonation (right panel)
Reports Input domains Reports Output domains
Tunes Words Other Singing Speaking
familiar
Notes Words Intonation Words
sounds
I. Peretz / Cognition 100 (2006) 1–32

Peretz et al. (1994) C.N. and G.L. + + C.N. and G.L. + (+) +
Peretz et al. (1997). I.R. + + I.R. + (+) +
Griffiths et al. (1997). H.V. + + Schön et al. (2004). 1 case + (+) +
Wilson and Pressing (1999). H.J. + + Murayama et al. (2004) 1 case + (+) +
Piccirilli et al. (2000). 1 case + +
Steinke et al. (2001). K.B. + +
Ayotte et al. (2002). 11 cases of congenital + + (+ voices) 11 cases of congenital amusia + (+) +
amusia
Satoh et al. (2005). 1 case + +
Laignel-Lavastine and Alajouanine (1921). + + Hébert et al. (2003) CC +
1 case
Godefroy et al. (1995). 1 case, during + + Peretz et al. (2004) GD +
recovery
Mendez (2001). N.S. + + Racette and Peretz (in press) 8 cases +
Metz-Lutz and Dahl (1984). G.L. +
Takahashi et al. (1992). 1 case +
Yaqub et al. (1988). 1 case +
+, preserved; , impaired; (+), preserved but not formally tested.
13
independently of the other so that one system can be selectively impaired. Although
this assumption remains unchallenged, sceptics have argued that double dissocia-
tions are not conclusive. A double dissociation can be simulated in an artificial net-
work that is built with a unitary system. That is, lesioned connectionist systems are
capable of generating double dissociations in the absence of clear separation of func-
tions or modules (e.g., Plaut, 1995). However, there is as yet no plausible unitary
explanation that can account for the pattern of selective impairment and sparing
of musical abilities reported here. Thus, the evidence points to the existence of at
least one distinct processing module for music.
Could this distinct processing module for music be tonal encoding of pitch? Indeed,
there is no need for all components that contribute to the musical capacity to be spe-
cialized for music. Only one critical component, if damaged or absent, could account
for all the manifestations of music-specificity that we have seen so far. Moreover, all
cases of amusia that we have studied seem to suffer from a dysfunction at this level
(Ayotte, Peretz, & Hyde, 2002). Every individual who is suffering from congenital
amusia fails to notice an out-of-key note that is inserted in a highly tonal melody.
This difficulty in detecting pitch-related changes extends to congenital amusics’
inability to perceive dissonance (Ayotte et al., 2002; Peretz, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c).
Moreover, all amusic cases who suffer from a recognition or production disorder
as a consequence of brain damage (see Table 1) are systematically impaired on the
pitch dimension, not on the time dimension. However, the origin of the deficit need
not be tonal encoding of pitch. An impairment in tonal encoding of pitch may arise as
a consequence of a lower level deficiency, involving fine-grained pitch analysis (Hyde
& Peretz, 2004) or pitch direction extraction (Foxton, Dean, Gee, Peretz, & Griffiths,
2004).
In principle, an impairment in rhythmic processing, particularly in rhythmic
entrainment, should also be detrimental to musical activities. Rhythm appears as
the essence of music. Moreover, rhythm disorders can occur independently from pitch
disorders (Di Pietro, Laganaro, Leeman, & Schnider, 2004), arguing for the function-
al separability of rhythm and pitch-based processing of music. It remains to deter-
mine to what extend these rhythmic disorders affect musical abilities exclusively.
Thus, the current evidence points to musical capacity as being the result of a con-
federation of functionally isolable modules. To date, however, only abilities related
to fine-grained processing of pitch appear to be uniquely engaged in music. The
music-specificity of many other modules remain to be examined (see Peretz & Colt-
heart, 2003). Nevertheless, the current evidence, essentially based on pitch-related
processes, argues against the view that the musical capacity is the result of gener-
al-purpose procedures.
4.2. Innateness
It is trivial to claim that no amount of training can make a Mozart. To be a

Mozart entails to be born Mozart. But what does it mean to be born Mozart
(Arshavsky, 2003)? The innateness of the musical capacity is taken for granted,
at least among nonscientists. As noted, domain-specificity does not entail that
musical capacity is coded in the genome. Reading the alphabet recruits whole word
recognition mechanisms involving mostly the left inferior temporal area, and yet
reading modules could not possibly be in the human genome. Literacy is a recent
invention and is not ubiquitous. In contrast, music possesses all the properties that
make its innate origins a legitimate question for research. Therefore, I will discuss
here what we know (or do not yet know) about the genetic underpinnings of musi-
cal behavior.
The spur for this quest and above all, its feasibility come from the recent discovery
of the FOXP2 gene, as related to speech. The discovery began with the study of the
KE family of language-impaired individuals. The KE family has three generations,
in which half the members suffer from a speech and language disorder (Hurst, Bar-
aister, Auger, Graham, & Norell, 1990). Around half of the children of affected indi-
viduals have the disorder, whereas none of the children of unaffected individuals do.
The pedigree points to a mutation on a dominant chromosome. This inherited dis-
order has been linked to a small segment of chromosome 7 (Fisher, Vargha-Khadem,
Watkins, Monaco, & Pembrey, 1998; Hurst et al., 1990). The chance discovery of an
unrelated individual with a similar speech deficit has allowed the narrowing down of
the disorder down to a mutation of a specific gene, named FOXP2 (Lai, Fisher,
Hurst, Vargha-Khadem, & Monaco, 2001). This gene seems to play a causal role
in the development of normal brain circuitry that underlies language and speech
(Marcus & Fisher, 2003).
The speech disorder experienced by the KE family is not language-specific. It also
affects oral movements. Hence, we may wonder if the mutation of the FOXP2 gene
also affects vocal abilities such as singing. It does. Alcock, Passingham, Watkins, and
Vargha-Khadem (2000) tested nine affected members of the KE family and showed
that they were impaired in rhythm production (and perception) while they performed
as well as normal controls in melody (pitch-based) production (and perception).
Hence, FOXP2 participates to other skills, such as rhythm. It is tempting to argue
that the mutated FOXP2 may compromise a common underlying cause for the
speech and rhythm deficits, such as a deficit in sequential temporal processing.
Indeed, pitch-based musical abilities seem governed by distinct genetic factors.
As noted, the opposite pattern – preserved rhythm but impaired pitch – charac-
terizes some ‘‘tone-deaf’’ individuals (e.g., Ayotte et al., 2002). Individuals affected
with congenital amusia are impaired on all tasks that require sequential organiza-
tion of pitch but do not necessarily have problems with time intervals (Hyde &
Peretz, 2004). This pitch deficit is most apparent, and even diagnostic of their con-
dition, when amusics are required to detect an anomalous (i.e., an out-of-key) note
in a conventional melody (Ayotte et al., 2002; Hyde & Peretz, 2005). This musical
pitch disorder seems family-based. As can be seen in Fig. 2, all our amusic subjects
have at least one first-degree relative who is similarly impaired whereas only one
member of the control families tested so far have such a disorder. Therefore, by
observing how the musical pitch disorder is distributed in the families of our pool
of amusics, we can obtain valuable information regarding its genetic origins. This
study is currently under progress in our laboratory. Second, the test that allows the
diagnosis of congenital amusia, the anomalous pitch test, has been shown to tap a
Fig. 2. Amusics and their first degree relatives were significantly impaired in the detection of a pitch
anomaly in melodies as compared to their matched controls (see left graph). In contrast, all subjects
performed similarly in the detection of time delays inserted in the same melodies. This pattern is supported
by a significant interaction between Group and Condition (F (2, 69) = 20.45, p < .001). As can be seen in
the pedigree of three representative amusic (proband) families (top) and two representative control families
(bottom), the presence of a musical pitch disorder runs in families; a pitch deficit corresponds to a score
that lies 2 SD below the mean of the control group (below cut-off). Moreover, not all family members are
affected, discarding an environmental factor as a plausible cause.
genetically transmitted ability (Drayna et al., 2001). Thus, the available data are
compatible with the idea that there are two innate factors guiding the acquisition
of the musical capacity, with one related to temporal sequencing and the other,
pitch sequencing.
It is important to emphasize that twin and family aggregation studies provide an
estimate of heritability but do not reveal the genetic etiology. It is a correlation, not a
causal relation between genes and the musical test. The anomalous pitch detection
test may be heritable in the absence of any specific genetic etiology. First, fine-
grained pitch discrimination abilities that are recruited by this test might not be
specific to music. For example, the pitch deficit might be due to slight rigidity of
the basilar membrane (the part of the ear that transforms physical vibrations in elec-
trical activity). In that case, the genetic cause may be related to cell elasticity, not
musical capacity. Yet, explaining the disorder in terms of a mutated ‘‘elasticity’’ gene
would still be valuable because it provides an entry-point into understanding the
genetic factors that contribute to the capacity for music, and not speech. Indeed,
the congenital amusic individuals identified to date have no speech disorder.
In sum, finding the particular gene or genes for a behavioral trait is a challenging
task. All human traits (including reading) are influenced by genetic factors. The
question is not so much whether there are genetic influences on behavior but rather
how much influence there is and how genes work to shape this behavior (Bouchard,
2004). Hence, the goal of future research is to describe the specific molecular mech-
anism that explains how genes interact with the environment to produce musical
capacity. The initial steps in this direction have been successfully undertaken with
FOXP2 and speech, which implies that the origin of the capacity for music may
be within reach.
4.2.1. Predispositions for music

Neurologically intact individuals appear to be born musical. Before one year of
age, the prelinguistic infant displays remarkable musical abilities that are similar, in
many respects, to those of adults (Trehub, 2001). Like mature listeners, infants dis-
play sensitivity to musical scales and to temporal regularity. Six to nine-month-old
infants process consonant intervals better than dissonant intervals (Schellenberg &
Trehub, 1996) and exhibit enhanced sensitivity for musical scales with unequal steps
(Trehub, Schellenberg, & Kamenetsky, 1999). The latter does not seem to arise
from exposure to ambient music because the bias is observed for invented musical
scales, as long as these have unequal steps. Hence, infants are perceptually
equipped for assimilating the pitch structure of any musical culture. On the time
dimension, infants prefer music that is subject to an isochronous temporal pulse
(Demany, McKenzie, & Vurpillot, 1977). They are also biased toward perceiving
regularity and metricality, in exhibiting sensitivity to slight disruptions of these
(Drake, 1998). The fact that all these perceptual skills appear precociously, with
no obvious function in language, points to the existence of music predispositions
(Trehub, 2001).
However, precocious abilities could be the result of formidable plasticity in the
infant brain. The human brain is thought to be born prematurely, in the sense of
being extremely plastic with little pre-wiring. There is a prolonged postnatal peri-
od during which interaction with the environment can shape the brain’s circuitry
(Johnson, 2001). A striking demonstration of this plasticity is the observation that
congenitally blind individuals use their visual cortex for auditory localization
(Röder et al., 1999). Moreover, there is little cost associated to this re-wiring
of the pathways into the visual areas. Congenitally blind people have also higher
auditory acuity in both pitch and time than normals (Gougoux et al., 2004). Sim-
ilarly, simple exposure to music, or musical incentives, may create connections
and networks that are adjusted to its needs, without reliance on inborn
mechanism.
Such brain plastic responses are plausible in the case of music. Music appears to
be important to infants. From birth, caregivers around the world sing to their
infants, intuitively using this means to regulate the infants’ state (e.g., comforting),
to get their attention and to share emotions. The caregiver mirrors infants’ abilities
and preferences by singing more slowly, at a higher pitch level, with exaggerated
rhythm, and in a more loving or emotionally engaging manner than when singing
alone (Trainor, Clark, Huntley, & Adams, 1997). Responsiveness to such infant-di-
rected singing appears inborn. Two-day-old hearing infants, born from congenitally
deaf parents (who sign and do not sing or speak), prefer infant-directed to adult-di-
rected singing (Masataka, 1999).
Caregivers also speak to infants in a sing-song manner, so-called ‘baby-talk’ or
‘motherese’. Nevertheless, infants seem to prefer (infant-directed) singing to speech.
Nakata and Trehub (2004) exposed six-month-old infants to videotaped perfor-
mances of their own mothers. Infants showed more sustained attention and
engagement to mothers’ singing episodes than to their speaking episodes. The
observation that emotional communication through singing is so powerful for
infants, even for hearing newborns of deaf parents, points to biological
preparedness.
As proposed by Trehub and Hannon (this volume), the propensity to listen to
music may be innate. This innate ‘‘music-detector’’ system would direct infants’
attention toward music. This system could be coupled with a general-purpose system
that acquires musical rules through learning or experience (see Morton & Johnson,
1991, for proposing a similar dual system for faces). By this view, musical abilities
can emerge from the general propensity of the brain to extract regularities from
the environment. Indeed, infants have powerful statistical learning capacities. Seven
minutes of exposure to tones with variable sequential probabilities of occurrence is
sufficient for eight-month-old babies to discover the sequential structure (Saffran,
Johnson, Aslin, & Newport, 1999). Thus, infants can capitalize on the statistical reg-
ularities in their auditory environment with relatively little effort. Music acquisition
can be guided by such general-purpose mechanisms. Modularization, or functional
specialization of the neural circuitries that subserve music processing, might emerge
later as the result of the fine-tuning of such general-purpose mechanisms through
experience with ambient music.
As noted by Trehub and Hannon (this volume), such general-purpose learning
mechanisms cannot easily account for the ubiquitous processing biases for conso-
nant intervals. Octaves and perfect fifths and logarithmic pitch scales have played
a structurally important role in musical systems across cultures and historical peri-
ods. A learning-oriented approach cannot easily account for these cross-cultural
invariants (Saffran, 2003). Consonant intervals are not easier to sing because they
are generally larger in pitch distance than dissonant intervals which may require
less vocal effort. Another difficulty for a general-purpose learning approach is the
definition of what is to be learned. How does the algorithm know which units of
information over which correlational statistics are computed? Identification of these
units, such as scale steps (the ‘‘phonology’’ of music) might be pre-wired. That is,
plasticity might be limited at this level. Not all pitch subsets or structures would be
learnable.
In sum, there is good evidence that human infants are well equipped to learn the
musical regularities of their environment. What is as yet unclear is the extent
this learning is constrained by innate factors or biases involving such features as
unequal scale steps and isochrony. What is clear, however, is that there is an innate
propensity to enjoy music.
4.2.2. A human trait

Music as a uniquely human characteristics may still build on biologically ancient
precursors. Comparative studies can help reveal what they are (Hauser & McDer-
mott, 2003). Research on the animal roots of musical behavior is just beginning
(Fitch, this volume; McDermott & Hauser, 2004; Wallin et al., 2000) and distin-
guishing the precursors of music from those of language is challenging. Humans
have both music and language whereas animals might have only one mode of audi-
tory–vocal communication. Most compelling types of evidence come from studies
that directly compare the learning and the processing abilities of primates with those
of humans (either adults or children). For example, comparisons of eight-month-old
human infants (Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996) and cotton-top tamarins (Hauser,
Newport, & Aslin, 2001) on a simple artificial language learning task using the same
preferential head-turn methodology indicate that both species are capable of basic
statistical learning. Similarly, Ramus, Hauser, Miller, Morris, and Mehler (2000)
have conducted parallel experiments with human newborns and cotton-top tamarin
monkeys, using an habituation–dishabituation procedure. They showed that human
newborns and tamarins can discriminate sentences from Dutch and Japanese but not
if the sentences are played backward. These results indicate that the human new-
borns’ tuning to certain properties of speech relies on general processes of the pri-
mate auditory system. It would be interesting to exploit such comparative
situations with music. Such work might allow us to clarify whether musical capacity
depends on unique mechanisms or whether these mechanisms are shared with other
species.
4.3. Brain localization
Domain-specificity (or modularity) is typically confounded with the notion of

brain localization. The idea is that a special-purpose mechanism must be confined
to a focal neural network as opposed to a vastly distributed neural network. Once
again, this needs not be. Domain-specificity and brain localization are separable
issues. Brain mapping of functions is extremely complex. Even in the case of the best
known modules, the language modules, there is no clear correspondence in neural
terms (Hickok & Poeppel, 2004). Moreover, even if the human mind contained only
one music module, this module might not be neuroanatomically isolable. The neural
substrate of the music module might be intermingled with networks devoted to the
processing of other complex patterns, such as speech intonation.
However, we know that music modules can be neuroanatomically isolable.
Otherwise, brain damage could not affect just musical abilities whilst sparing other
aspects of cognition. Thus, music modules apparently possess the property of neu-
ral separability (Peretz & Coltheart, 2003). Moreover, as argued previously, there
is evidence that music processing relies on at least one module that is domain-spe-
cific and neurally separable. The best candidate we have so far concerns the sys-
tem that maps pitch onto musical keys (i.e., tonal encoding of pitch). Current
research points to the inferior frontal brain areas as critically involved (Tillmann
et al., 2003; Koelsch et al., 2002; Hyde et al., submitted for publication). However,
this localization mostly corresponds to the processing of harmonic structure, a

culture-specific elaboration of pitch that is quite recent in music history. More-
over, tonal encoding of pitch is likely to recruit a vast network, because tonal
encoding of pitch involves a cascade of mechanisms. For example, Jackendoff
and Lerdahl (this volume) distinguish three different forms of elaboration of pitch
hierarchies in a musical context, by considering different principles for pitch space,
tonal reduction, and tension/relaxation. Thus, it would not be surprising to dis-
cover that more than one neural network contributes to the musical interpretation
of pitch. A major breakthrough would be to localize the essential mechanism that
triggers the whole cascade.
In principle, localization of such essential modules is possible. For examples, the
fusiform gyrus has been associated with configural processing that is essential to
face recognition (Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka, 1998) and the superior temporal
sulcus, for voice processing (Belin, Fecteau, & Bédard, 2004). Presently, however,
we cannot make similar claims about music (Peretz & Zatorre, 2005). Music pro-
cessing recruits a vast network of regions located in both the left and right hemi-
spheres of the brain, with an overall right-sided asymmetry for pitch-based
processing. Finding such a widely distributed network of brain regions raises a
number of issues that I will address in turn; first, the issue of which brain areas
might share processing components with other functions, such as those involved
in language and, second, the question of consistency of brain organization across
individuals. Finally, the effects of musical training or of neural plasticity will be
summarized.
4.3.1. Invasion of language areas

The issue of music and language specificity has a long history in neurology
(Henschen, 1924). This question has been recently re-revisited by the observation
that harmonic deviations activate Broca’s area (Koelsch et al., 2002). This research
suggests that the mechanisms underlying syntactic processing are shared between
music and language (Levitin & Menon, 2003; Patel, 2003). However, there are
problems with this conclusion that should be addressed. First, we should keep in
mind that Broca’s area is a vast brain region that can easily accommodate more
than one distinct processing network (Marcus, Vouloumanos, & Sag, 2003). Sec-
ond, the degree of anatomical proximity of activation maxima that should count
as reactivation of the same region in another task is not straightforward, particu-
larly when activation is not limited to Broca’s area but involves the right hemi-
sphere homologous region (Maess, Koelsch, Gunter, & Friederici, 2001) and
when the cognitive domains (music and language) are studied separately in different
laboratories.
Clearly, there is need for further comparison between music and language in the
same experimental setting, using similar tasks that are matched (or manipulated) for
attentional resources (Shallice, 2003). Indeed, it is easier to demonstrate separability
than overlap. Yet, the demonstration of overlap between music and language is fea-
sible. For example, Koelsch et al. (2004) have recently shown that semantic process-
ing recruits the same electrical generators (e.g., underlying the N400 ERP
component) in music and language. Of course, it is always possible to argue that the
level of comparison is not appropriate. For instance, semantic processing is limited
in music (see Bharucha et al., this volume). However, the search for commonalities is
not arbitrary and depends on knowledge related to the functional organization of
both music and language. As attempts for neural separability fail, we should become
increasingly skeptical regarding the complete isolation of music processing from lan-
guage processing.
4.3.2. Brain plasticity

Localization of the essential musical modules is not crucial for understanding
the nature of music, but it provides important information regarding its biological
foundations. One important neural property of a biological function is consistency
across individuals. That is, one would expect a pre-wired organization to exhibit
consistency in brain localization. Such a prediction is nontrivial in the case of
music because there is a wide variability in experience. Depending on the moment,
quality and quantity of exposure, various brain spaces may adjust to the musical
needs.
This issue can be illustrated with studies of second language acquisition. The
acquisition of a second language can be acquired at different moments, with varying
degrees of experience. The neural consequence of this variability is that the brain
areas mobilized by the second language (L2) vary capriciously from individual to
individual (e.g., Dehaene et al., 1997). That is, listening to a story in L2 (i.e., English
in the case of French-speakers) activates variable areas beyond the common auditory
areas involved in native language processing (L1). It is only in the brain of profes-
sional translators that the two languages activate common areas, in the classical lin-
guistic areas (Perani et al., 1998). Similarly, in bilinguals who learned their second
language late in life, sentence production tasks in L1 and in L2 activate two nonover-
lapping subregions of Broca’s area (Kim, Relkin, Lee, & Hirsch, 1997). Only early
bilinguals who received equal practice with their two languages from birth showed
an activation overlap for L1 and L2. Accordingly, we may expect inter-subject var-
iability in the cortical representation of music. At the very least, we may expect ana-
tomical differences between musicians and nonmusicians who differ drastically in
attentive exposure and practice.
Even if everyone engages in some sort of musical activity in everyday life, they
do so with limited time and effort. In contrast, a few individuals become profi-
cient musicians, through extensive practice from an early age. The fact that musi-
cal training is not uniform or systematically provided in current educational
curricula introduces natural variety of musically acquired skills that could be
related to brain functioning. In other words, musicians represent a unique model
in which to study plastic changes in the human brain (Münte, Altenmüller, &
Jäncke, 2002).
Indeed, there is increasing evidence that the brain of musicians is shaped by
experience, either by expansion or reduction, depending on the stimuli and structur-
al levels examined (see Münte et al., 2002, for a review). Hence, one would expect
to find evidence of size differences in certain regions of the musician’s brain com-
pared to that of untrained individuals. The prime areas of interest are the motor
areas. In a seminal study, Elbert, Pantev, Wienbruch, Rockstroh, & Taub (1995)
investigated somatosensory evoked magnetic fields in string players. Source analysis
revealed that the cortical representation of the digits of the left hand (the fingering
hand, especially for its fifth digit) was larger in musicians than in nonmusicians. In
the case of the right hand, in which no independent movements of the fingers are
required in string players, no differences were found between musicians and nonmu-
sicians. Moreover, the cortical reorganization of the representation of the fingers
was more pronounced in musicians who had begun their musical training at an ear-
ly age.
Training effects are not limited to motor control. Several auditory brain areas
have been identified as differing between musicians and nonmusicians. For example,
Pantev and colleagues, using MEG, have shown that brain responses to piano tones
were 25% larger in musicians than in nonmusicians (Pantev, Hoke, Lutkenhoner, &
Lehnertz, 1989). This effect appears more pronounced for tones from the practiced
instrument (Pantev, Engelien, Candia, & Elbert, 2003), which implies use-dependent
plasticity. However, using a similar MEG technique, Schneider, Scherg, Dosch,
Specht, & Gutschalk (2002) found that both the early activity evoked by pure tones
and the gray matter volume of the anteromedial portion of Heschl’s gyrus was more
than 100% larger in professional musicians compared to nonmusicians. Pure tones
do not exist in the environment and, hence, cannot account for the observed effects.
In fact, the functional and the morphological differences were related to musical apti-
tude, implying influence of innate determinants. These findings re-open the debate
about whether the observed brain differences between musicians and nonmusicians
arise from genetic or other predispositions (e.g., talent) as well as from practice
and experience.
By improving our comprehension of this tuning process, research on musical
expertise effects will teach us much about brain plasticity and the likelihood of find-
ing consistent brain localization for shared musical abilities across musicians and
nonmusicians. We may speculate that the brain system that underlies specialization
for pitch processing is fixed (probably innate). The others might be more plastic
within a time period (critical period). And finally others may be plastic over an entire
lifetime. But there is a cost associated with pre-wiring. The existence of tone-deafness
might correspond to the price to pay for a sophisticated machinery underlying musi-
cal sensitivity.
5. The emotional power of music
Most of us feel that music is much more than entertainment, that music can have
a profound impact on listeners as well as on music-practitioners. Emotion is an inte-
gral part of the music experience. This emotional power is something of a mystery or
paradox because of the abstract, nonrepresentational nature of music. Yet, music is a
powerful tool for emotion and mood modulation, as further discussed in Bharucha,
Curtis and Baroo (this volume). Movement is a key component of emotional reac-
tions to music. Much music is composed with very specific action tendencies in mind-
getting people to sing, to dance, march and fight, or work and play together. Up to
now, the majority of studies have been concerned with the appraisal of music (Gabri-
elson & Juslin, 2003).
With respect to emotional appraisal of music, it is remarkable how skilled
young children are. From the age of three years, they show the ability to recog-
nize happiness in the art music of their culture, and by the age of six they show
adult-like abilities to identify sadness, fear, and anger in music (Cunningham &
Sterling, 1988; Dolgin & Adelson, 1990; Terwogt & van Grinsven, 1991). More
specifically, by the age of six, children show full knowledge of the rules (mode
and tempo) that govern the happy–sad character of surrounding music. This abil-
ity remains generally unchanged over a lifetime (Dalla Bella, Peretz, Rousseau, &
Gosselin, 2001).
This observation does not mean that emotional appraisal is predetermined. On
the contrary, emotional appraisal is modulated by experience. The ‘‘mere exposure
effect’’ on musical taste is well established. As listeners, we tend to like what we
already know (see Bornstein, 1989, for a review). In music, we prefer familiar over
unfamiliar music but we are unaware of this bias (Peretz, Gaudreau, & Bonnel,
1998). This unconscious effect of prior exposure to music may account for a vast
array of phenomena, such as the preference for consonance over dissonance (Zentner
& Kagan, 1996) and the association of the major–minor modes with happy and sad
emotions (Peretz, Gagnon, & Bouchard, 1998).
Although shaped by individual experiences, musical emotions can trigger the
limbic system, an evolutionary ancient brain structure. In one demonstration,
Blood & Zatorre (2001) reported cerebral blood flow changes while people experi-
enced musical ‘‘chills’’, in several brain areas, including the dorsal midbrain, ventral
striatum (which contains the Nucleus Accumbens), insula, and orbitofrontal cortex.
Some of these regions have been implicated in response to highly rewarding or
motivationally important stimuli, including food (Small, Zatorre, Dagher, &
Jones-Gotman, 2001) and drugs of abuse (Breiter et al., 1997). Interestingly, this
physiological response – the ‘‘chill’’ – is related to the action of endorphins (Gold-
stein, 1980). Thus, under certain circumstances, music can access neural substrates
that are associated with primary reinforcers, such as food and sex. This neurobio-
logical link between music and the limbic system is not limited to hedonic mecha-
nisms. The amygdala, another subcortical region associated to threat-related
stimuli, can also be recruited by music (Gosselin et al., 2005). Thus, music appears
as effective as food, drug, and facial expressions to elicit subcortically mediated
affective responses.
Therefore, it seems that emotional responses to music can be aroused as readily in
humans as reflexes. Indeed, musical emotions occur with immediacy (Peretz et al.,
1998), through automatic appraisal, and with involuntary changes in physiological
and behavioral responses. With limbic mediation, consistency, and precociousness,
musical emotions resemble other important classes of biological stimuli, such as
facial emotions (Peretz, 2001c). Hence, the study of music as an emotional medium
may best explain its ubiquity and its utility.
6. Why are humans musical?
If music corresponds to an impulse that emerged early in human evolution, that is

present and functional early in human development, that has an important emotion-
al impact, and that resides, at least in part, in specialized brain areas, then the key
question becomes ‘‘Why?’’. What adaptive function was served by music in ancestral
activities so as to provide its practitioners with a survival advantage in the course of
natural selection?
Two main evolutionary explanations have been offered. The initial account was
provided by Darwin (Darwin, 1871) himself who proposed that music served to
attract sexual partners. This view was revived by Miller (2000), who argues that
the impulse to make music (and create art in general) is a way to impress prospec-
tive sexual partners with the quality of one’s brain and thus, indirectly, one’s genes.
Musical virtuosity is unevenly distributed, demanding, hard to fake, and widely
prized. Both males and females may use the tactic, with males impressing and
females attracting partners (e.g., think of Ulysses who had to be chained up to
resist to the chant of sirens). However, the dominant view about the adaptive value
of music lies at the group level rather than at the individual level, with music help-
ing to promote group cohesion (Wallin et al., 2000). Music is present in all kinds of
gatherings – dancing, religious rituals, ceremonies – strengthening interpersonal
bonds and identification with one’s group. The initial step in this bonding could
be the maternal vocal behavior of singing and expressive speech, generating emo-
tional communion, through a process so-called emotional contagion. Emotional con-
tagion is the tendency to automatically mimic and synchronize vocalization and
movements with those of another person and, consequently, to converge emotion-
ally (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1994). In this way, as proposed by Blacking
(1987), the power of music (and dance) is generated by the extension of individu-
ality in community. The utilitarian value of dance and music would be to enhance
co-operation and educate the emotions and the senses. It is a form of communion
whose adaptive function is to generate greater sensory awareness and social
cooperation.
In support of the contention that music has adaptive value, particularly for the
group, is the fact that music possesses two features that affect contagion or commu-
nion. Pitch intervals or frequency ratios allow harmonious vocal blending, and reg-
ularity favors motor synchronicity or grace. These two musical features are highly
effective in promoting simultaneous singing and dancing, while allowing some auton-
omy between voices and bodies (Brown, 2000). This design appears specific to music.
It is not shared with speech, which requires individuality and nonsimultaneity for its
intelligibility. These special features fit with an important criterion noted by Buss,
Haselton, Shackelford, Bleske, & Wakefield (1998). For a system to qualify as adap-
tive, it must have a ‘‘special design’’ to offer effective solutions to a problem. The
bonding problem in the case of music is to override individuality for the benefit of
the group.
This solution might be the product of natural selection. As Fitch (this volume)
notes, similarities in the vocal learning of complex songs in evolutionary distant lin-
eages such as humans, birds, whales and seals may have arisen by convergent evolu-
tion. Nature generates similar solutions to similar problems. As Fitch also notes, we
may never be able to evaluate the adaptive value of music.3 Most of these hypotheses
about the historical functions of music are untestable. Only questions about its cur-
rent utility can be addressed (see Fitch, this volume, for a few promising avenues).
However, evolutionary questions are not sterile; they may provide new ideas for
research. For example, Mithen (2005) proposes that pitch could have preceded
rhythm in evolution, and that pitch and rhythm could have independent evolution-
ary forces. Being in-tune could be one force behind sexual selection and being in-time
could be a group cohesive force. After all, there is good evidence that pitch and time
are independent, although interactive, in music processing.
7. Conclusion
Although many questions about music and music processing remain unresolved,
there is evidence that musical abilities depend, in part, on specialized cerebral pro-
cesses that have their root in musical predispositions, that hint at an initial special-
ization. Many of the arguments presented here are directed against strong claims
about an exclusively cultural perspective on music. My intention is to show that such
claims are neurobiologically questionable. I do not think that apes can learn to play
music or acquire music-like behavior, nor do I believe that music acquisition is based
actually on rote learning and the brain is equipotential. What I suggest, rather, is
that music is an autonomous function, innately constrained and made up of multiple
modules that overlap minimally with other functions (such as language).
3
One possibility that cannot be ignored is that music has no adaptive function. Gould & Lewontin
(1979) have argued that many unique cognitive abilities are not directly selected but might be consequences
of other selection pressures. Innate does not mean adaptive. Music could be innately transmitted by
accident, or by being associated, by chance, with an adaptive trait. This is an important point to keep in
mind because ‘‘by-products’’ are less informative as a focus of study than adaptations. Because
nonadaptive abilities are consequences and not causes of the organization of the system, their functioning
might be more arbitrary and may vary widely across individuals. If a system is adaptive, it must be
universal. It must also develop reliably, be well engineered, and have a reproduction-promoting design.
Although the evidence is compatible with the adaptive function of music, this evidence is not compelling.
Much more data will be needed before conclusions can be drawn. Note that music is not special in this
regard. The origins and evolution of language ability are still a matter of controversy and, above all, a
relatively recent question of enquiry (Christiansen & Kirby, 2003). Although there seems to be agreement
that some pre-adaptation occurred in the human lineage prior to the emergence of language, the nature of
this pre-adaptation is a matter of debate. One recent proposal that is endorsed by Chomsky is that the
ability for complex hierarchical learning of sequentially presented sequences (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch,
2002) or recursion is essential for the emergence of language. Another influential proposal has language
originating from manual gestures rather than primate calls (Corballis, 2004). Thus, there are reasons to
expect that questions related to language evolution will profit from the progress on the origins of music. At
present, progress on evolution for music lags behind that of language, but perhaps not for long (Balter,
2004).
I also think that the potential applications of this type of research and question-
ing, as well as the current excitement in our field, should not be ignored. Question
about the nature of music have implications for how caregivers raise children, how
educators teach students and how clinicians diagnose and treat patients. The answers
may also have a societal and financial significance, pointing to potential benefits of
music. Much work remains to be done but discussing these issues is not premature
but timely. We cannot improve the way our brain is built, but we can better under-
stand its functioning and adjust teaching methods and musical practices to our bio-
logical make-up and limitations. The role of academia and of sciences in general is to
be aware of all these implications. There is every reason to welcome advances in the
biological foundations of musical behavior but to be cautious in interpreting the
evidence.
Acknowledgments
This work as benefited from many discussions and correspondences with col-
leagues and students including Lola Cuddy, Simone Dalla Bella, Jay Dowling, Mary
Riess Jones, Régine Kolinsky, José Morais, Caroline Palmer, Jenny Saffran, John
Sloboda, and Sandra Trehub. I am particularly grateful to Sandra Trehub for
improving the quality of the text, and to Jacques Mehler and an anonymous reviewer
for their constructive comments. The work is supported by grants from the Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes of
Health Research and the Human Frontier Science Program.
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Cognition 100 (2006) 1–32

The nature of music from a biological perspective

Available online 17 January 2006

Keywords: Musical capacity; Innateness; Speciﬁcity; Brain; Modules; Universals; Predispositions;

Music is generally regarded as an exquisite art form, a reﬁned product of human

ethnomusicologists reinforce this cultural perspective on music. Modern Composers

2. How musical are humans?

4. How unique is music processing?

4.1.1. Musical modules

Thus, co-morbidity between musical disorders and other deﬁciencies seems to be

I. Peretz / Cognition 100 (2006) 1–32

It is trivial to claim that no amount of training can make a Mozart. To be a

4.2.1. Predispositions for music

4.2.2. A human trait

4.3. Brain localization

Domain-speciﬁcity (or modularity) is typically confounded with the notion of

this localization mostly corresponds to the processing of harmonic structure, a

4.3.1. Invasion of language areas

4.3.2. Brain plasticity

5. The emotional power of music

6. Why are humans musical?

If music corresponds to an impulse that emerged early in human evolution, that is

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